Image As Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture

Argues that histories of Christianity should analyze religious artwork as well as texts, discusses attitudes towards religious images, and examines the portrayal of women

Miles (Harvard Divinity School) carefully develops a discussion of language, hermeneutics, and the neglected hermeneutics of visual images. She then gives a lengthy consideration to visual images in fourth-century Roman churches, to images of women in 14th-century Tuscan painting, and to visions and images in 16th-century Protestant and Roman Catholic Reform. Her final chapters define the applicability of image use findings to a contemporary society flooded with secular media images, yet spiritually improverished in terms of images. A truly exciting book which will be of special interest to artists, art historians, church historians, theologians, and those concerned with hermeneutics. Carolyn M Craft, English, Philosophy, & Foreign Languages Dept., Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va.
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